


Watch Me

by mggislife2789



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Best Friends, Betrayal, Blackmail, Coercion, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fix-It, Friendship, Gen, Gun Violence, Hurt/Comfort, I had to unfuck that finale, Mental Coercion, Post-Canon Fix-It
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-26
Packaged: 2019-10-27 20:26:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17773670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mggislife2789/pseuds/mggislife2789
Summary: Two years in and out of solitary confinement have given Cat Adams plenty of time to contemplate her revenge against the BAU, specifically Spencer Reid and Jennifer Jareau. In a classic cat and mouse game, Cat puppeteers JJ’s every move, lest harm come to Will, Henry and Michael. But can JJ live with herself if she has to hurt Spencer in the process? Will the BAU survive this perceived betrayal? Can they come back from this?Disclaimer: I HATED, I mean LOATHED the Criminal Minds season 14 finale. I felt JJ was totally out of character and the confession was 13 years too late. This fic explores the confession in a different light, and as always I don't own this shit, it's just my brain working overtime after the credits roll.





	1. Chapter 1

“Watch me.”

Watch me. Watch me. Watch me. Watch me. Watch me. Watch me. Watch me.

Twenty-three hours a day behind gray stone walls left a woman with a lot of time to ponder. Fixate on those last words and the loss that came with them.

As she scraped her fingernail against the wall, digging those two words into the concrete over and over and over again, Cat Adams waited for those four words. You have a visitor. While the walls of her solitary cell weren’t soundproof, she could hear little but the sound of her own voice as she plotted out her revenge. The ragged screech of her nails against the wall served as a wonderful deviation from the norm.

Once those four beautiful words caressed her ears, she could set her plan in motion. She could be outsmarted again, but with insanity collapsing in on her at an alarming speed, she didn’t care. Plus, she was already in solitary. What else could they do? She would go out with a lasting impact. She would ensure that neither Spencer Reid nor Jennifer Jareau would ever forget her. In their every waking moment, the two would see her face and hear her voice. Of that she would make sure.

For months she’d built up her contacts – found the weak ones and exploited them for her own benefit - and with every rare opportunity she had to send out mail, she sent a letter to the same woman.

All were different in little ways, but they conveyed the same message. Come and visit. If Cat knew Jennifer Jareau, and she was sure she did, the female agent would eventually get sick and tired of receiving letters and would visit her purely to tell her that nothing was going to happen. But Cat knew better. All she had to do was get Jennifer in the room with her and the plan would fall perfectly into place.

It had taken quite a bit of coercion and the inclusion of a few more people in her plan than she would’ve preferred, but the bow was finally strung and ready to be loosed.

As she paced the miniscule cell, going over and over her plan in her mind to ensure that everything was in place, she heard a knock on the door. The guard’s voice traveled through the little slat where her food was usually delivered. “Adams, you have a visitor.” 

“Who is it?” She asked. Cat stood facing the wall, a warm smile on her face as she rested her head against the cool concrete.

“An FBI agent named Jennifer Jareau,” he bellowed.

Perfect.

Honestly, she’d expected it to take a little bit longer to get Jareau in here, but the sooner the better. She was actually going crazy in here.

Taking her usual stance with her back against the door and her hands behind her back, she felt the cool metal of the handcuffs snap around her wrists so she could be escorted to another room where she’d meet with her illustrious visitor. “Don’t know why anyone comes in here to see you,” the guard said roughly.

“Everyone loves crazy chicks,” Cat replied dryly, “even if they don’t want to.”

It was too bad she couldn’t turn this guard to her side. He was better looking than the one she’d managed but she did what needed to be done. After sitting her down and locking her cuffs in front of her to the table, he twisted his wedding ring around his finger, something she noticed he did whenever she tried to make a move on him. “You know the drill. You’ll have half an hour.”

“Yup.” She popped the ‘p’ at the end of the word, not bothering to look up as he left the room.

Just as she’d suspected, the agent waited a fair few minutes to walk in, probably in an attempt to throw her off her game, but her time in solitary had only honed it. The door creaked open to reveal the second agent she wanted to see. She’d prefer having Spencer here, hands on her throat, but she was determined to make both their lives hell, and this was the best way to do it.

“Looking a little haggard lately,” Cat said with a devious smile, the subtle laughter in her voice crawling up JJ’s spine. “Never a dull day at the BAU, am I right?”

“Cut the crap,” JJ snapped. Wonderful. She was already on edge. “All it will take is a few words from me to take away every single privilege you have inside these four walls.”

She wanted Cat to snap at her, to lose control, but her constitution had only grown in the two years since they’d last seen each other. “Take a seat, Jennifer,” she said icily, “we have so much catching up to do.”

“No, we don’t.” After getting Spencer out of prison and the whole Scratch ordeal, they were all exhausted. None of them needed this right now. “What do you want? You said you had something to tell me and frankly there’s nothing you can say that’s going to get you a leaner sentence or a cell in gen pop, so you can save it.” She stood up to leave the room.

“How’s Spencer doing? He lost his mind yet? I bet Diana is getting worse and worse every day.”

JJ snapped back around and smacked the table, the sound reverberating against the walls. “Spencer has forgotten about you. You’re not even a blip on his radar. We’ve had important things to deal with. Not you.”

“He’s in pain. He’s always in pain. So are you,” she said, pointing her finger towards JJ’s crystal blue eyes. “I can see it in your eyes, actually the bags under your eyes but you know what I mean. Anyway, your pain isn’t over yet. The thing you seem to forget about me is that I don’t let things go. Someone is coming for you, courtesy of yours truly. In this moment of terror, you’re going to confess to Spencer that you’ve always loved him.”

“Absolutely not,” JJ responded curtly, once again getting up to leave.

“Oh, I forgot to ask how Will and the boys were. He takes them to school, right? Leaves the house with them between 7:15 and 7:30. Gets them to school by 7:45. Henry’s in until 2:45, but little Michael is only in for a half-day. He’s just turned three?”

JJ spun around, tears damned up against her eyes as her voice quivered. “How?”

“On the weekends, you all go to the park down the block from your house - only on Saturdays though. Sundays you play soccer in the front yard as one big happy little family,” she sneered. “I know every waking moment of your lives, Mrs. Jareau, so if you’d like to take a seat again, we can speak like adults.”

Blood boiling, JJ sat down, mind running with how she could possibly know what she knew. How had she gotten hold of her schedule? How did she get someone to help her even in solitary? “Now,” Cat started again, “when that someone comes for you – and believe me you’ll know it when it happens – you are going to tell Spencer you’ve always loved him. You’ll live through the ordeal, I’ve made sure of that, but the after effects of such a confession will be monumental I’m sure.”

“What makes you think he’d even believe me? We’ve been best friends for years. He knows I don’t feel that way about him-“

“Because he’s lonely. You know Spencer, but I do too. You’ll play him for as long as I say.”

“No,” JJ replied, shaking her head and pushing away from the table. “No, I won’t. I won’t do-“

“You will. Because if you don’t, I only have to make one phone call and any of your boys could get a bullet between the eyes.”

“I’ll tell the guard outside-“

“You can if you want, but the one that’s out there now just got in and he’s mine. He’ll make that phone call and little Henry will just-“ She made a finger gun and pointed it at herself.

JJ could feel the bile searing her stomach, eating away at her insides. She could easily jump across the table and choke the life out of her, but if she knew Cat Adams, the woman had thought of nearly every eventuality.

“You know I’ll sniff out every single person you’ve used and exploited and I will put a stop to this,” JJ stated. Her voice shook with each word and even she didn’t truly believe the words she spoke.

Cat nodded. “I know. The BAU is good but I’m better and by the time you find everyone I have in my arsenal, the damage will already be done. The thing with the BAU is that you close a case and move on, but me – I’ve had two years to focus on nothing but you. My baby was taken from me and I’ve had nothing else to occupy my time but you.” She stood up as far as she could given the cuffs and leaned over the table. “If anything changes on my end, my guard being changed out for instance, or anything changes on your end, I will know and one or all of your boys will die. Are we clear?”

“You have taken on the wrong mother,” JJ whispered softly.

“No,” Cat replied. “You have.”

The two women shared a tense look before JJ left without a word, speeding passed a different guard than the one that had ushered her in to speak with Cat in the first place.

Outside and blinded by the sun, she lurched forward, her lunch ending up on the ground in front of her, her breaths coming in short and shallow. Once she caught her breath, she stood up straight and powered toward her car, slipping inside without a glance to anyone or anything. She couldn’t tell anyone anything – not until she knew.

Will and the boys…

Spence…

She couldn’t do this to him; He’d been through too much already. But she couldn’t say anything if Cat truly did have eyes everywhere like she insinuated. The lives of her husband and children hung in the balance. Once she’d dismantled Cat’s army, she would tell Spencer and he would understand…right?

——-

As she woke up the next morning, JJ shivered, knowing that somewhere nearby someone was watching her and her family. Wiping away the steam on the mirror, she saw the bags under her eyes and the bloodshot in them. She’d tossed and turned so badly that Will had woken her up fully to ask if she was okay. That was when the first little lie left her. “I’m fine.” 

With a faked smile and kisses for her boys, she headed to work, grabbing her usual morning coffee along the way – and Spencer’s too. She clenched her hands so tightly are the cups she almost exploded the drinks all over herself. Even this one benign gesture became tainted knowing what she had to do.

Once she got to work, she grabbed the coffee and headed inside with a drive she normally couldn’t muster so early in the morning. Every spare moment she had was going to be dedicated to dismantling Cat’s plan. But she had to go it alone.

“Hey JJ,” Spencer said, his sleepy morning smile piercing her heart in the worst way. He reached for the coffee she’d brought for him and she stiffened as his hand brushed hers. She couldn’t do this to him. How was she supposed to lead him on like this? Who’s to even say it would work? “Thanks for the coffee.”

“No problem, Spence.” Without another word, she turned with a strained smile and headed to her office.

“You okay?” He called. “You seem tense this morning.”

Of course he knew. He always knew. “Yea, I’m okay,” she replied. Another lie. “Just had a hard time getting the boys up for school this morning. They wanted to stay home and I wouldn’t let them.”

Before he could notice her tells, she turned and bolted toward her office, breaking into a silent sob as she closed the door behind her. The reality of what she had to do was finally, truly, hitting her and she couldn’t stop from shaking as the sobs racked her body.

If she’d only let Spencer kill Cat two years ago, she wouldn’t be here now, having to weigh the lives of her boys against the friendship she’d leaned on for more than a decade and a half.


	2. Chapter 2

It’s so easy.

Why do they make it so easy?

All it takes is the ‘fuck me eyes’ and the promise of little sex and they’re in the palm of your hands.  
Benjamin Graffa. What an idiot.

His eyes slipped over her like smooth silk, just a little too tight – like a vise. But it was Cat who had the vise on him…because he’s an idiot.

“There’s something you’re not telling me,” she cooed. “I can see it in your eyes.”

His eyes widened, astonished at her perceptiveness. “It’s a wonder you ever got caught honestly.”

Cat flashed him a tight-lipped smile – somewhere between ‘that was just a mistake’ and ‘if you bring anything like that up again I’ll kill you where you stand.’ “So what is it?”

“I’m seeing someone outside the prison,” he said, tone clipped as he gauged whether or not he was about to meet his end at the hands of a woman more than half a foot shorter than him. Quickly, he added to the statement in the hopes of saving his ass. “Don’t get me wrong, you are…fantastic,” he said luridly, imagining their last tryst out of sight of the cameras, “But a man’s got needs and-“

“I don’t care,” she laughed. “You wanna get a little ass on the side that’s your business. I just need you to work with me. Feed me the information I ask for when I ask for it and you can drown yourself in whatever gutter skank you want to.”

He didn’t appreciate her calling Mary a gutter skank, but fear kept him quiet. “She works for the Bureau actually.”

“Tell me it’s no one on the BAU.”

“No, she works with Violent Criminal Apprehension Program.”

“Wonderful, she might end up being useful.”

Shaking his head without any forethought, he spoke, “No, leave Mary out of this. She’s been through enough. Don’t touch her.”

“I won’t. I’ll just kill you. If she can get the information, you live, if she can’t you die. Clear? I know that self-preservation instinct will work to everyone’s advantage.”

Benjamin huffed, relenting out of that instinct of self-preservation. “Fine. What information do you need?” 

“I need her to keep track of the goings on in the BAU, specifically with Spencer Reid and Jennifer Jareau. Work schedules, general mental health, family lives, the whole nine. No piece of information is too small. And this shouldn’t need to be said, but keep my name out of it.”

“That’s it?” He asked. He thought Cat would want some kind of file or something that would require hacking she didn’t know how to do. This seemed simple enough.

Nodding, Cat smiled as she began to pace the floors of her cell again. “That’s all Benjamin. You can go now. I have some thinking to do.”

-

In the week since seeing Cat, everything felt different. Maybe it was all in her head, maybe something actually was different in the day-to-day life she shared with her boys, but all she could put her finger on was that she remained on edge. Every kiss shared with Will felt false and strained. Every kiss to her boys’ heads felt like it could be the last. Every step she took within her own home brought dread – like stepping on a mine, knowing it, and not being able to move for fear of implosion. Like being back in Afghanistan, but even worse because there her family was safe from impending doom.

After slipping on a suit that gave the illusion of power without any of the reality, she headed downstairs to kiss her boys goodbye before heading into work. She’d gone in earlier than normal every day to try and look into Cat, but so far nothing had come from it.

Henry and Michael sat at the table eating cereal before school with no knowledge that possible death sat right outside their door. She lingered with their morning kisses, ruffling Henry’s hair a little more than she would normally before turning to Will. “I’ve gotta run. I love you,” she said, leaning in for a kiss.

Will returned it in kind, gently grabbing her wrist when she turned around to leave. “JJ, you okay? You seem sad lately.” He knew something was wrong, but she wouldn’t, no couldn’t, put him even further into the line of fire. 

“I’m good,” she replied, knowing for certain that her husband could see through the lie. “Just a lot going on at work.”

He remained unconvinced, but she would talk when she was ready. “Okay. I love you, JJ.”

“I love you, too.” More than she could ever truly put into words.

-

If only she could see her own micro-expressions to learn to better control them. Sitting across from Spencer as the team indulged in some rare downtime together, she found herself fully conscious of what emotions she was wearing on her sleeve. Each time she looked at Spencer, she felt her stomach turn, knowing what she would need to do if she couldn’t break down Cat’s plan in time. He’d been through so much and knowing that she would have to be the source of further pain made her heart sink – but there wasn’t enough to time to dwell on things with the case that just came in.

Car accidents in broad daylight were followed by the driver dying at the wrong end of a gun and seemingly no connections between the victims. Though they had a basic profile, pinning down a motive was nearly impossible. 

The day that followed gave them more questions than answers, leaving them scratching their heads as it seemed the unsub, Casey, was having his strings pulled by someone else. Murder by proxy. But why? What was this other unsub’s motive in all this?

No matter how much they searched for a reason, they couldn’t find one – until Garcia dug deep enough to realize that all the victims had been connected by a case that took place eight years prior. In a game of truth or dare gone wrong, four people died and the unsub had been at fault, now going after anyone and everyone that had anything to do with putting him away. 

The judge was the next logical target. JJ and Reid were paired off and sent in the opposing direction of Luke and Rossi when they passed her car and the madman behind all this. After getting out of prison, he was getting his life together, so what made him spiral into a killing spree?

Even sitting at the wrong end of his gun, neither she nor Reid could figure that one question out, until JJ decided to play his sick game and asked her name. “Agent?”

“Jareau.”

“Jareau,” he parroted with an heir of familiarity. 

He knew her. This was Cat’s ace in the whole.

“What’s it gonna take for everyone to getting out of here safe and sound?”

“It doesn’t work like that!” He screamed.

JJ shook with fear and anger and an insistent feeling of stupidity that she’d walked directly into Cat’s mousetrap. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t give him the answer he wanted – the answer Cat wanted. Every time Casey demanded her truths, she tried. Tried to get him to believe that there were only four people she trusted in this world – Spencer, Emily, Will and Aaron. As much as the thought made her insides vibrate, she used the baby she’d lost in Afghanistan to try and send him on a different path than the one he was barreling down.

But he wouldn’t take it. Even her best poker face couldn’t fool him in this moment. 

Finally, she willed the words to enter her mind, stumbling over them as they spilled from her mouth and the tears streamed down her cheeks. “Spence…I-,” she started, biting back bile, “I’ve always l-loved you.” 

Despite Spencer’s genius, JJ had always been able to read him well, but in this moment she couldn’t place whether he did or didn’t believe her; she prayed he didn’t. Confusion and sadness plagued his features, but where they stemmed from she didn’t know and no matter how this affected their relationship, she would never be the same for having hurt him.

For a second, Casey seemed to be appeased by her confession, but when she stared down the barrel of his gun once again, she wondered whether this was the last thing she’d have done with her life – killed her boys and forever altered her relationship with her best friend. 

A gunshot rang out and it took her a moment to realize that Spencer managed to cut the tape around his wrists to grab his own gun. 

Normally, a gunshot to the heart meant the end of it all, but this time it was only the tip of the iceberg.

-

Time. Time. Time. All she had was time. Although it was infuriating on a level that she couldn’t even imagine, she needed the time to pound into Casey’s head that he was wronged by the system and needed to exact some revenge. Getting him in here was the easy part. Though short, their time together was full of angry sex and a devotion on his part that had her running in the opposite direction. 

She spent nearly a year convincing him, but she finally managed it. Their previous visit was cut short by one of the guards she hadn’t succeeded in pulling into her pocket, so today was about the plan.

“I don’t care what you need to do, who you need to pull into this to make this happen, but it needs to happen exactly as I’ve said. Are we clear? Jareau and Spencer are the ones that need to be at the scene. Clear?” She asked emphatically.

Nodding, Casey asked the one question he’d been keeping back since she contacted him out of the blue. At first it mattered her reasons, but now he wanted to know. “Why are you doing this? Why these two?”

Her sparkling eyes scared him, but there was something else there besides malicious intent. 

“When Spencer had his hands around my throat, I wanted him to kill me. At least then he’d have to live with killing a pregnant woman, but he didn’t. He didn’t because JJ stopped him! And then they took my little girl!”

Anger vibrated within every muscle. The fact that she’d been pregnant was astonishing. Cat had the femme fatale vibe down pat, but a mother she was not. “You never wanted kids. I wanted all that with you after I got out of prison and you said no way.”

“I carried that little girl with me for nine months. Maybe before I hadn’t but after that…she was mine, and they took her from me. She’s more than a year old and I don’t even know what she looks like!” She screamed, the rage in her voice drawing the attention of Benjamin, who was thankfully the guard on duty at the moment. “Are we clear with the plan?” She needed to regain her composure.

“Yes. I’ll get it done and stick it to all the fuckers that put me away at the same time.”

“Good.”

Without another word, he left Cat to stew. Far gone didn’t even begin to cover it – and he didn’t dare cross her now.

Meanwhile, Cat screamed herself hoarse, an image of what she remembered of her daughter’s face fading into oblivion and replaced with the picture of the two agents that ruined her life falling apart at her hands.


End file.
